Little Bird, a premium six-part, one-hour limited series, follows an Indigenous woman on a journey to find her birth family and uncover the hidden truth of her past. It premieres on Friday May 26 on Crave and APTN lumi, A 90-minute documentary, Coming Home, providing historical context about the Sixties Scoop via the real stories of Little Bird’s cast, crew and community advisors, begins airing on June 30.

Removed from her home in Long Pine Reserve in Saskatchewan, Bezhig Little Bird is adopted into a Montreal Jewish family at the age of five, becoming Esther Rosenblum.  Now in her 20s, Bezhig longs for the family she lost and embarks on epic journey to find her lost family and put the pieces of her fragmented past back together.

I received the first two episodes in advance and I can’t wait to see the others on Crave. We follow Bezhig Little Bird (Darla Contois) as she embarks on a path to find her birth family and uncover the hidden truth of her family history.
 As she begins to track down her siblings, Bezhig unravels the mystery behind her adoption and discovers that her apprehension was connected to a racist government policy, now known as the Sixties Scoop. Bezhig’s sense of identity shatters, and she is forced to reckon with who she is and who she wants to become.

Led by Contois, the character-driven drama features a talented cast of Indigenous actors, including: Ellyn Jade; Osawa Muskwa; Joshua Odjick; Imajyn Cardinal; Braeden Clarke; Eric Schweig; and Michelle Thrush. Rounding out the cast is Lisa Edelstein (HOUSE) who plays Esther’s adoptive mother, Golda Rosenblum.
Headed by an Indigenous creative team,  Little Bird is developed by Podemski and Rezolution Pictures, and created by Podemski and head writer Hannah Moscovitch. The creative team includes directors Zoe Hopkins and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and was written by Hopkins and Moscovitch. The series is executive produced by Christina Fon, Ernest Webb, Catherine Bainbridge, Linda Ludwick (Rezolution Pictures), Kim Todd, Nicholas Hirst (Original Pictures), Jennifer Podemski, Hannah Moscovitch, Zoe Hopkins, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Jeremy Podeswa, along with Christian Vesper and Dante Di Loreto (Fremantle). Producers are Tanya Brunel and Jessica Dunn (OP Little Bird), Claire MacKinnon and Philippe Chabot (Rezolution Pictures) and Lori Lozinski and Ellen Rutter.
While Bezhig/Esther’s story is not Podemski’s life story, Little Bird is based on true events and experiences growing up with an Anishinaabe mother and Jewish father, being removed from her mother at the hospital and a social worker who made it her mission to get her back to her mother after three months.

Parallel to the Indigenous themes of loss in this story are the trauma and loss experienced by the Jewish community. Both Esther/Little Bird and her mother Golda, a Holocaust survivor, are coping with trauma and loss and are more alike than they ever imagined.

Podemski,Moscovitch, Edelstein, Executive Producers Fon and Jeremy Podeswa are Jewish. Podemski’s grandfather, Podeswa’s father and Fon’s parents are Holocaust survivors.  

  Podemski, director & writer Zoe Hopkins, director Elle-Maija Tailfeathers, Contois and the bulk of the cast, Executive Producer Ernest Webb and Producer Tanya Brunel are Indigenous. The production featured a training program that included opportunities for Indigenous creators at all skill levels to gain practical on-set experience leading to subsequent employment in the industry.

The recent winner of the Audience Award Prize at the 2023 SERIES MANIA Festival in Lille, France, Little Bird  was filmed in and around Winnipeg and Brokenhead Ojibway Nation on Treaty 1 territory, in Sioux Valley Dakota Nation on Treaty 2 territory, and in Muscowpetung First Nation on Treaty 4 territory.  Showrunner Jennifer Podemski was also recently presented with an Academy Board Of Directors’ Tribute Award at the 2023 Canadian Screen Awards.

By Mike Cohen